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The author's framing of Apple's patent applications isn't congruent with the way Apple views touch. The W3C, and standards advocates, view touch events in the s

The author's framing of Apple's patent applications isn't congruent with the way Apple views touch. The W3C, and standards advocates, view touch events in the same way they do mouse clicks. They're interactions that should be standardized and incorporated in to an event model for use in web applications. Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered. Their already granted pinch to zoom patents reflect this view. So, to a standards body, Apple's actions are perceived as undermining standards. To Apple, they're perceived as an act to protect a R&D investment.

mbrubeck 15y ago
And yet Apple extended the web platform with these APIs, shipped them in a production browser, documented them (without labeling them as experimental or proprietary), published web content that used them, and encouraged other web developers to do the same [1]. Other WebKit vendors followed suit and implemented Apple's APIs, including Android, BlackBerry, and Nokia. Then other browser vendors like Opera followed. Mozilla had our own independently-developed multitouch API [2] but earlier this year we implemented WebKit-style touch events in Gecko and helped lead the standardization process at the W3C. They were already a de-facto standard; we had to implement them if we wanted mobile Firefox to work with popular sites like Google Maps. If Apple had no intention of ever allowing other browsers to implement touch events, then they could at least have shipped them with a vendor prefix, as Mozilla did with our "MozTouchMove" events (and other experimental or pre-standard APIs). Instead they polluted the global namespace, created a de-facto standard, and never gave a word of feedback to the standards effort that emerged around their work. Only at the very end of the process, after supporting the API in their production browser for four years, did they suddenly act to block the acceptance of a de-jure standard based on the de-facto standard they created. Touch events are not just for novel multi-touch scenarios; in browsers like Safari they are necessary even for single-touch drag and drop handling that has been possible in desktop browsers for over a decade. If the W3C and Apple can't work out a royalty-free licensing arrangement for Apple's essential claims, then this seems very likely to fragment the mobile web even further by creating yet more "works only in Safari" pages. While we don't know the outcome yet, the path Apple has taken so far does not reflect the responsibility or stewardship toward the web that I'd like to see from a major browser vendor. The mobile web is already in terrible shape when it comes to pages working across browsers. Do you think Google would ever push an update to Gmail that makes it not work in Firefox? Well they did exactly that to mobile Gmail this year, and didn't fix it until a month later [3]. It's like the 1990s browser war all over again. Keeping the web platform based on open standards is essential to keep it open to new browsers and technologies. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/HandlingEvents/HandlingEvents.html https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/Apple... [2]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events_%28Mozilla_experimental%29 https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events_%28Mozilla... [3]: http://bugzil.la/678150 http://bugzil.la/678150 (I work for Mozilla and I am co-editor of the W3C Touch Events spec, but these opinions are my own.) EDIT: I think your comment is an accurate reflection of Apple's priorities -- I'm arguing against Apple's actions, not against your comment.
- MatthewPhillips 15y ago
  Do you think Apple is against W3C adopting their implementation of touch events or are they against any non-Safari browser having touch? If it's the former the working group can just adapt the API a bit and rely on libraries to provide the compatibility layer.
  - notatoad 15y ago
    i think that apple wants non-safari browsers to have touch events, but they want non-safari browsers to pay licensing fees for that privilege.
    - buster 15y ago
      Which probably (and hopefully) won't happen with Firefox.
    - glassx 15y ago
      I don't know... Charging royalties would be a PR disaster that would cost much more than the licensing in the long term, and if the incentive for charging isn't financial, then it means don't really want other browsers to have Safari-compatible touch events... that, or they're just trying to delay their adoption as much as they can.
untog 15y ago
The author doesn't seem that concerned with the patent applications themselves, rather Apple repeatedly throwing them at the standardisation process. Every time that it's happened so far they've done it at the last minute and halted the standardisation process, only to find that the patents weren't even relevant anyway. Given the insane amount of time that the standardisation bodies take anyway, Apple's approach is extremely unhelpful.
- huxley 15y ago
  Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better, but read up about what Rambus did to the JEDEC standards body for an example of really nasty behaviour.
  - ajross 15y ago
    So... it's OK for Apple to do this because Rambus was worse? (edit: I don't disagree that Rambus was worse -- they were, and threatened to effectively kill the competetive and vibrant DRAM market with their antics. But Rambus lost, and died. Apple is still around, and behaving badly.)
    - iy56 15y ago
      Huxley said >Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better So why would you read it as a claim that "it's OK for Apple to do this"? He's just pointing out an interesting bit of history.
      - untog 15y ago
        It's a linguistic thing, I think. Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better, but The 'but' implies "Not disagreeing, but not totally agreeing either". It might have been better to not mention Apple at all: "It's interesting to note that Rambus persued this tactic in an even worse way..."
ajross 15y ago
"Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered." Surely you recognize that to a lot of people this is exactly the problem, right? Using questionable patents to prevent straightforward interoperability requirements (i.e. make a web app to act like a native app) is, to me and I suspect lots of others, a fundamentally evil act. It's all well and good to Love you some Apple. But when they start acting directly counter to the interests of the public, don't expect people to stand behind them just because they make pretty phones.
- dextorious 15y ago
  """Surely you recognize that to a lot of people this is exactly the problem, right? """ Yeah, but tough luck. Why didn't those complaining Opera/Mozilla devs come up with the same interaction methods before Apple/fingerworks to give them to the public domain? """when they start acting directly counter to the interests of the public""" Well, selling computers instead of giving them with zero profit margin is against the interest of the public too. Where do you draw the line? Why should the public benefit from something Apple invented by bypassing Apple and getting it from other vendors? If you invoke the defense of the questionable patent, since "pinch-to-zoom" is "too obvious", then why didn't anyone else come up with it before and patented it? It can't be both obvious AND non patented before. What it can be, though, and I think it is, is "obvious in retrospect". Which is not the same as obvious at all. That said, I'm all for a short period (5-10 years?) where a patent can be valid. But I don't buy the "questionable" or "obvious" argument. If it's obvious, patent it and grant it to the world, or at least establish some major prior-art.
  - ajross 15y ago
    "It can't be both obvious AND non patented before." This is so wrong it makes my brain hurt to read it. Even beyond plainly bad logic (you patent every "obvious" idea you have?!) it's contradicted by a continuous stream of "bad patent with prior art" stories on this site and a hundred others. Hell, I see some links to that sort of thing in this very thread. "Why should the public benefit from something Apple invented by bypassing Apple and getting it from other vendors?" Because that's is the whole point of patent law, according to the US constitution at least. And in any case that's not what's happening here. Apple isn't trying to make sure we get pinch-zoom from them, they're trying to make sure that web applications cannot get pinch-zoom at all.
praptak 15y ago
> Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered. "Pioneered" is a strong word for a technology whose development they had nothing to do with, then just bought it out so that no one else can innovate upon it: http://sysop073.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-multitouched-your-mom.html http://sysop073.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-multitouched-your-mom...
tosseraccount 15y ago
"Apple views touch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered." That's the problem. The marketing that "Apple invented the PC, Apple invented the GUI, Apple invented music players, apple invented pads" is one thing. But to actually continually threaten competitors with law suits is just being a bully.
nextparadigms 15y ago
Just imagine what would've happened to the Web if everyone ever making a technology for the Web would've thought like Apple.

mbrubeck 15y ago

And yet Apple extended the web platform with these APIs, shipped them in a production browser, documented them (without labeling them as experimental or proprietary), published web content that used them, and encouraged other web developers to do the same [1]. Other WebKit vendors followed suit and implemented Apple's APIs, including Android, BlackBerry, and Nokia. Then other browser vendors like Opera followed. Mozilla had our own independently-developed multitouch API [2] but earlier this year we implemented WebKit-style touch events in Gecko and helped lead the standardization process at the W3C. They were already a de-facto standard; we had to implement them if we wanted mobile Firefox to work with popular sites like Google Maps. If Apple had no intention of ever allowing other browsers to implement touch events, then they could at least have shipped them with a vendor prefix, as Mozilla did with our "MozTouchMove" events (and other experimental or pre-standard APIs). Instead they polluted the global namespace, created a de-facto standard, and never gave a word of feedback to the standards effort that emerged around their work. Only at the very end of the process, after supporting the API in their production browser for four years, did they suddenly act to block the acceptance of a de-jure standard based on the de-facto standard they created. Touch events are not just for novel multi-touch scenarios; in browsers like Safari they are necessary even for single-touch drag and drop handling that has been possible in desktop browsers for over a decade. If the W3C and Apple can't work out a royalty-free licensing arrangement for Apple's essential claims, then this seems very likely to fragment the mobile web even further by creating yet more "works only in Safari" pages. While we don't know the outcome yet, the path Apple has taken so far does not reflect the responsibility or stewardship toward the web that I'd like to see from a major browser vendor. The mobile web is already in terrible shape when it comes to pages working across browsers. Do you think Google would ever push an update to Gmail that makes it not work in Firefox? Well they did exactly that to mobile Gmail this year, and didn't fix it until a month later [3]. It's like the 1990s browser war all over again. Keeping the web platform based on open standards is essential to keep it open to new browsers and technologies. [1]: https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/AppleApplications/Reference/SafariWebContent/HandlingEvents/HandlingEvents.html https://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/Apple... [2]: https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events_%28Mozilla_experimental%29 https://developer.mozilla.org/en/DOM/Touch_events_%28Mozilla... [3]: http://bugzil.la/678150 http://bugzil.la/678150 (I work for Mozilla and I am co-editor of the W3C Touch Events spec, but these opinions are my own.) EDIT: I think your comment is an accurate reflection of Apple's priorities -- I'm arguing against Apple's actions, not against your comment.

MatthewPhillips 15y ago
Do you think Apple is against W3C adopting their implementation of touch events or are they against any non-Safari browser having touch? If it's the former the working group can just adapt the API a bit and rely on libraries to provide the compatibility layer.
- notatoad 15y ago
  i think that apple wants non-safari browsers to have touch events, but they want non-safari browsers to pay licensing fees for that privilege.
  - buster 15y ago
    Which probably (and hopefully) won't happen with Firefox.
  - glassx 15y ago
    I don't know... Charging royalties would be a PR disaster that would cost much more than the licensing in the long term, and if the incentive for charging isn't financial, then it means don't really want other browsers to have Safari-compatible touch events... that, or they're just trying to delay their adoption as much as they can.

untog 15y ago

The author doesn't seem that concerned with the patent applications themselves, rather Apple repeatedly throwing them at the standardisation process. Every time that it's happened so far they've done it at the last minute and halted the standardisation process, only to find that the patents weren't even relevant anyway. Given the insane amount of time that the standardisation bodies take anyway, Apple's approach is extremely unhelpful.

huxley 15y ago
Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better, but read up about what Rambus did to the JEDEC standards body for an example of really nasty behaviour.
- ajross 15y ago
  So... it's OK for Apple to do this because Rambus was worse? (edit: I don't disagree that Rambus was worse -- they were, and threatened to effectively kill the competetive and vibrant DRAM market with their antics. But Rambus lost, and died. Apple is still around, and behaving badly.)
  - iy56 15y ago
    Huxley said >Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better So why would you read it as a claim that "it's OK for Apple to do this"? He's just pointing out an interesting bit of history.
    - untog 15y ago
      It's a linguistic thing, I think. Not disagreeing that it is an area where Apple should have behaved better, but The 'but' implies "Not disagreeing, but not totally agreeing either". It might have been better to not mention Apple at all: "It's interesting to note that Rambus persued this tactic in an even worse way..."

ajross 15y ago

"Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered." Surely you recognize that to a lot of people this is exactly the problem, right? Using questionable patents to prevent straightforward interoperability requirements (i.e. make a web app to act like a native app) is, to me and I suspect lots of others, a fundamentally evil act. It's all well and good to Love you some Apple. But when they start acting directly counter to the interests of the public, don't expect people to stand behind them just because they make pretty phones.

dextorious 15y ago
"""Surely you recognize that to a lot of people this is exactly the problem, right? """ Yeah, but tough luck. Why didn't those complaining Opera/Mozilla devs come up with the same interaction methods before Apple/fingerworks to give them to the public domain? """when they start acting directly counter to the interests of the public""" Well, selling computers instead of giving them with zero profit margin is against the interest of the public too. Where do you draw the line? Why should the public benefit from something Apple invented by bypassing Apple and getting it from other vendors? If you invoke the defense of the questionable patent, since "pinch-to-zoom" is "too obvious", then why didn't anyone else come up with it before and patented it? It can't be both obvious AND non patented before. What it can be, though, and I think it is, is "obvious in retrospect". Which is not the same as obvious at all. That said, I'm all for a short period (5-10 years?) where a patent can be valid. But I don't buy the "questionable" or "obvious" argument. If it's obvious, patent it and grant it to the world, or at least establish some major prior-art.
- ajross 15y ago
  "It can't be both obvious AND non patented before." This is so wrong it makes my brain hurt to read it. Even beyond plainly bad logic (you patent every "obvious" idea you have?!) it's contradicted by a continuous stream of "bad patent with prior art" stories on this site and a hundred others. Hell, I see some links to that sort of thing in this very thread. "Why should the public benefit from something Apple invented by bypassing Apple and getting it from other vendors?" Because that's is the whole point of patent law, according to the US constitution at least. And in any case that's not what's happening here. Apple isn't trying to make sure we get pinch-zoom from them, they're trying to make sure that web applications cannot get pinch-zoom at all.

praptak 15y ago

> Apple views toch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered. "Pioneered" is a strong word for a technology whose development they had nothing to do with, then just bought it out so that no one else can innovate upon it: http://sysop073.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-multitouched-your-mom.html http://sysop073.blogspot.com/2008/02/i-multitouched-your-mom...

tosseraccount 15y ago

"Apple views touch events as a proprietary interaction that they pioneered." That's the problem. The marketing that "Apple invented the PC, Apple invented the GUI, Apple invented music players, apple invented pads" is one thing. But to actually continually threaten competitors with law suits is just being a bully.

nextparadigms 15y ago

Just imagine what would've happened to the Web if everyone ever making a technology for the Web would've thought like Apple.